The most difficult word in
today's verse is vijugupsate,
from the root √gup, which has connotations of protecting oneself or
hiding something from oneself; and, in its desiderative form, of
shunning or despising others. EBC translated paraṁ vijugupsate as
“look with disgust on another;” EHJ as “pay no heed to
another;” and PO as “treat another with contempt.”

I
think what the prince is pointing to is the unconscious tendency that
psychologists call denial and at the same time – insofar as the
desiderative of √gup means to shun, detest, and despise – the
unconscious behaviour of projecting onto a detestable other what one
seeks to deny in onself.

In
regard to this unconscious tendency and this unconscious behaviour,
evidently, the prince is separate from the unconscious herd in that
he for one is conscious of the tendency.

How
does this conscious recognition on the part of the prince fit into
the wider context of his awakening of the bodhi-mind?

It
seems to me to be part of a meditation, in the context of awakening
of the bodhi-mind, on the ironic meaning of separateness.

The
conventional wisdom in Mahāyāna Buddhism, at least as it was taught
to me, is that awakening the bodhi-mind
means establishing the will to deliver others over to the far shore
before one is delivered oneself. But an iconoclast could make the
argument that this Mahāyāna precept is itself based on a fallacy, namely, separation of self and others.

What
evidence is there in Saundara-nanda of how the separation into self
and others is treated, in the words of Aśvaghoṣa as narrator, and
in words spoken by the Buddha?

In
Canto 3, Aśvaghoṣa describes the Buddha acting not for “others”
but for the welfare of the world(jagato
hitāya). This description is phrased in such a way, it seems to me,
as to avoid separation of self and others. The captain of the
Brittany Ferries' MV Normandy, after all, when he crosses the English
channel, takes me across too. He doesn't strive heroically to send me
across first in the ferry before diving in himself in his swimming trunks.

And
so the wheel of dharma -- whose hub is uprightness, whose rim is
constancy, determination, and balanced stillness, / And whose spokes
are the rules of discipline -- there the Seer turned, in that
assembly, for the welfare of the world (jagato hitāya). // SN3.11 //.... For
the fathomless sea of faults, whose water is falsity, where fish are
cares, / And which is disturbed by waves of anger, lust, and fear; he
had crossed, and he took the world across too. // SN3.14 //

Similarly,
later in the present Canto of Buddha-carita, when the prince talks to
his horse, he speaks in terms not of benefitting others (para) but of
benefitting the world (jagat), which, unlike "others," can
be understood as including the self.

So
realize well that my departure from here is yoked to dharma for the
welfare of the world (jagadd-hitāya)
/ And exert yourself, O best of horses, with speed and
prowess, for your own good (ātma-hite)
and the good of the world (jagadd-hite
ca). //BC5.78//

In
addressing Nanda in Canto 15 of Saundara-nanda, the Buddha does talk
in terms of self and other. But again it is not in a spirit of
discriminating the two:

For unhelpful thoughts
carried in the heart densely grow, / Producing in equal measure
nothing of value for the self and for the other (ātmanaś-ca
parasya ca). // SN15.20 //

Later in Canto 15 comes the
following consideration of one's own people and other people.
Interestingly from the standpoint of this investigation, the Buddha
himself does not talk of "other" people; the terms he uses
are sva-jana (one's own people) and jana (people):

Among beings dragged by our
own doing through the cycle of saṁsāra / Who are our own people
(sva-janaḥ), and who are other people (janaḥ)? It is through
ignorance that people attach to people. // 15.31 // For one who
turned on a bygone road into a relative (sva-janaḥ), is a stranger
(janaḥ) to you; / And a stranger (janaḥ), on a road to come, will
become your relative (sva-janaḥ). // 15.32 // Just as birds in the
evening flock together at separate locations, / So is the mingling
over many generations of one's own (sva-janasya) and other people
(janasya). // SN15.33 //

At the
end of Saundara-nanda, however, the enlightened Buddha does speak to
the enlightened Nanda in terms of self and others:

But
deemed to be higher than the highest in this world is he who, having
realized the supreme ultimate dharma, / Desires, without worrying
about the trouble to himself, to teach tranquillity to others
(parebhyaḥ). // SN18.56 // Therefore forgetting the work that needs
to be done in this world on the self, do now, stout soul, what can be
done for others (para-kāryam). / Among beings who are wandering in
the night, their minds shrouded in darkness, let the lamp of this
transmission be carried. // SN18.57 //

Here my
argument – that the Buddha/Aśaghoṣa tended to avoid language
that might nurture the conceited fallacy of a self that is separate
from others – seems to break down. I would only add that the Buddha
draws the fallacious distinction between self and others most starkly
or overtly when addressing a person who is no longer liable to be
deluded by fallacies, in which case the Buddha needn't be so careful
in his use of language.

What
strikes me most about today's verse, to come to a tentative
conclusion, is that the prince, in his present stage of the process
of awakening the bodhi-mind, does not come out and excitedly declare,
like some kind of Christian martyr, “I intend totally to sacrifice
my own well being, and just work for the salvation of others.” Nor
does the prince get ahead of himself and say what the enlightened
Buddha will later say to the enlightened Nanda about forgetting work
on the self and doing what one can for others. The prince's treatment
of self and others, it seems to me, on the basis of mental balance
realized in the first stage of sitting-meditation, as opposed to the
kind of nervous agitation described as arising in Canto 3, is more
deeply meditative, more considered, more perceptive, more attuned to
reality, more philosophical and at the same time more practical –
more in the middle way.

Having
conducted the above investigation yesterday, and looked ahead to
tomorrow's verse which seems to describe sitting-meditation as “this
most excellent dharma,” and slept on all of this, and then practised
sitting-meditation this morning as usual, I shall sum up as follows:

The
separateness from which sitting-meditation springs involves a mental
and physical distancing of oneself from the end-gaining desires and
instincts of the herd, but this separateness is not a separateness in
which I wish to see myself as essentially different from “the
other.” Such a wish – if I wished to see myself as potentially
one of the immortals, as distinct from others who are subject to
sickness, aging, and death – might cause me to disavow or despise
“the other,” who would represent to me what I would like to deny
about myself (in the same way that Jews represented to Adolf Hitler
the Jewishness he wished to disavow in himself). The separateness
from which sitting-meditation springs, then, does not detract from
the sense that we are all in the same big boat, so we can all sink or
we all float. The truth is that we are all of us in the same boat,
and it is not necessarily floating on a river in Egypt.